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Researchers crack quantum computing conundrum

Building functional systems may be easier than first thought

Quantum computers may be easier to build than first thought, according to a
new paper from scientists at Imperial College London and the University of
Queensland.

The technology has shown enormous potential, but building a system of any
real size is difficult because they are fragile and prone to errors in data
streams.

The
new
paper uses a new theory of quantum data analysis that improves data reading,
allowing quantum computers to tolerate data error rates of almost 25 per cent.

"Just as you can often tell what a word says when there are a few missing
letters, or you can get the gist of a conversation on a badly connected phone
line, we used this idea in our design for a quantum computer," said Sean
Barrett, lead author of the study and Royal Society University Research Fellow
in the Department of Physics at Imperial College London.

"It's surprising, because you wouldn't expect that if you lost a quarter of
the beads from an abacus that it would still be useful."

Traditional computers use bits for computation, which exist either as ones or
zeros. Quantum bits, or qbits, use a quality called superposition to operate in
both states simultaneously, dramatically increasing computing power per density
for certain tasks.

As the number of qbits a system can handle increases, the power increases
further, since two qbit systems can process four streams of calculation, rising
to eight for three qbits and upwards exponentially.

However, current systems are limited as they are prone to errors when
photons, atoms or ions leak out of the system and data is lost.

The new paper suggests that mapping the position of the lost data without
affecting the rest of the information is possible, and can increase fault
tolerance by two orders of magnitude.